Micro Review: supply chain by Pimone Triplett

supply chain by Pimone Triplett

68 Pages
University of Iowa Press, 2017
ISBN: 9781609385378

Reviewed by Matt Fowler

Pimone Triplett’s supply chain is a complex collection of poems examining the relationship between the apparatus of daily life and the individual shaped by such a tragedy.Triplett’s poems confront the reader with ecological destruction, self-doubt, intellectual control, and the nagging anxiety of trying to navigate a hostile social construct.

The tone is set early in the collection with the poem “The End of Evolution“ where Triplett examines the intersection of industrial society and the natural world in relation to the individual life.Triplett forces the reader to take notice of our cultural schizophrenia with lines like;

Leading to environment under control,

later given the sack.

As in sacristy, sacrifice, fissure

and crack, smudge where the time-snotted

genome of a single goat gets fiddled with,

making him faint at first wolf’s howl

in a signal to save others.

Triplett’s supply chain is a clear and pointed look at the survival of all things; ego, personality, landbase, structure, and family as they are twisted and contorted within the hyper-rigid chain of command that is existence within modern society.

the flatbeds loaded with lumber, clear cuts

ongoing

the shipping lanes crammed cargo full—

nothing like what we’d like

to be by now—

It is Triplett’s haunting tone in partnership with her masterful vocabulary and imagery that make supply chain a must-read for any admirer of contemporary poetry.